On October 4 1819, Erste Austrian Savings Bank was signed into life with a deed written in a parsonage in Leopoldstadt — Vienna’s traditional workers and Jewish quarter. Erste Group, as the bank is now known, is proud enough of what the deed said to quote from it to this day: “No age, no gender, no class, no nation is excluded from the advantages that the savings bank offers to every investee.
It helps, though, that about a quarter of Erste’s shares are held by a linked network of co-operative institutions in Austria, the single largest of which is the Erste Bank Foundation: a non-profit that funds an array of charitable causes on the bank’s behalf. “As a core shareholder of Erste Group, Erste Foundation secures the independent future of one of the largest financial services providers in central, eastern and south eastern Europe,” the foundation says.